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Alzheon Says Its Alzheimer’s-Fighting Drug Shows Results

Claims that tramiprosate helps stabilize patients over an 18-month period.

The small biotech company Alzheon hasn’t given up on its big push to get approval for tramiprosate, its beta-amyloid-targeting drug that it says can be used for patients genetically disposed to Alzheimer’s. FierceBiotech reports that the drug does better than placebo in stabilizing symptoms over 18 months. As Forbes reported in February, the story of attempts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s has been one of bitter disappointment. “In the past decade or two, due to high monetary incentive associated with the disease, companies like Eli Lilly, Eisai, Roche, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Biogen, and Merck & Co. have (‘had’ in the case of Pfizer) devoted billions of dollars into projects, sadly with zero returns. After more than 400 clinical trials of therapeutics and billions of dollars, there is a failure rate of nearly 100% in trials that have been reported, compared to 81% for cancer. No new therapies have been approved in more than a dozen years.”

Alzheon, for its part, is touting what it calls the “large clinical benefits” of tramiprosate. FierceBiotech: “Specifically, the new analysis shows that according to the widely used ADAS-cog rating scale, 57% of patients with mild Alzheimer’s remained ‘cognitively stable’ over the 18-month trial period, compared to just 20% of those on placebo.”